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Still Struggling

The problem in the United States — it’s a little bit different. …there is no very strong professional league. They have just the MLS, but they have not these professional leagues, which are recognized by the American society.

It is a question of time, I thought when they had the World Cup in ’94, 1994. But ’94 — now we are in 2012, it’s now 18 years. So it should have been done now. But they are still struggling.

- Sepp Blatter

c/o Yahoo Sports

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.

- Aldous Huxley

Sometimes you come up with an idea that you think is great, only to find out that someone has beaten you to the punch and produced something much better than you ever could have. I once had a teacher who told us the story of her father’s experiences in the Spanish Civil War, fighting with the International Brigades. I was enthralled, and even thought about writing a story based on it – until shortly thereafter when I realized it had been done before – some book called For Whom the Bell Tollsby some guy named Hemingway.

The above quote from the ever-quotable Sepp Blatter is almost a year old, but it popped into my head in the build-up to Sunday’s Portland-Seattle match, mainly because of how out-of-touch and completely wrong it is. I intended to write about how soccer is growing by leaps and bounds in the U.S., but Brian Phillips has said everything I wanted to say. Read his article, then scroll down for my contribution.

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5 thoughts on “Still Struggling”

The three person rule reminds of that line from Alice’s Restaurant, which suddenly went into hiding. There’s a more fundamental difference that Europeans have a blind spot for, America has no villages. Villages or trades formed the first clubs who used the sport to substitute for physical brawls. The modern rules took away kicking the shins, punching and running with the ball. Gaelic football is old style football. We also did have cities that have grown outward to shallow villages whole. The Industrial Revolution brought rural people in to the city. Soccer was a common point of early conversations. The NFL did the same in here. Hooligan violence had nothing to do with soccer. They already hated each other. Nottingham Forrest hates Derby County and Sheffield and Leeds and…. You do good work. I always enjoy reading your post.

"When you start supporting a football club, you don't support it because of the trophies, or a player, or history, you support it because you found yourself somewhere there; found a place where you belong."

- Dennis Bergkamp

"The thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football."

- Terry Pratchett

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